Great Library Strategy (exploit?)

[Shink]

Sorry but I don't have a save game to prove this - here's what happened.

Playing on standard size map on v1.17f, I started off with only the lowly Indians on my continent. Wiped them out and went for AGES without ever meeting anyone - I was separated by oceans so no one could reach me. By some sort of luck, I was able to build the Great Library, but never got a tech advance for it. I supposed it was because I wasn't aware of any two other civs to get a free techie. I thought that was terrible, but then an amazing thing happened.

Someone crossed the ocean and my backwards civ would never be the same. I was using the pope strategy so had a ton of gold and units, but no techs. But as I met this one civ and bought contact with everyone else, I was rushed through the Stone Age and almost into the Industrial Age!

I even got tech advances that occur AFTER Education when the Great Library should have been extinct. In one turn I got about 15 tech advances and the Library went extinct, but talk about an good investment! You can't beat getting Democracy from the Great Library!

 

[Caesar_Augustus]

Wow!

Although I'm sure this is a bug and will be fixed sometime, I don't know if it's much of an exploit.

A) It's extremely hard to pull off, unless you never meet other civs until much later.

B) Not having those later Mid Age techs means you have a much lesser chance at scoring the important wonders.

Must have been a nice surprise for you though!

 

[Rneilan]

Shouldn't have been much of a surprise if you were playing pope the whole time... cuz if you aren't researching tech, everyone's gonna be way ahead of you anyway, ya know?

 

[Shink]

I wasn't playing full-blown pope - left science at 10% to get the 40 turn max rule to kick in.

Regardless, the suprise was that I got tech advances for free that I never should have gotten (i.e. advances that have Education as a prerequisite). And if you play on continents, this is actually a little easier to pull off than you may imagine. Still not really easy, but I've been in quite a few games where I'm left alone with only one or two neighbors until Magnetism is discovered.